$30.00
HARDCOVER, NEW
Ships in 1 to 3 days
| Qty | Store | Section |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Beaverton | Music- General History |
| 11 | Burnside | Music- General History |
| 18 | Hawthorne | Music- History and Criticism |
| 25 | Local Warehouse | Music- History and Criticism |
| 37 | Local Warehouse | Music- General History |
| Hide store locations | ||
Used Book Alerts 
More copies of this ISBN:
The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
by Alex Ross
|
|
|
About This Book
ISBN13: 9780374249397 |
Awards
2007 National Book Critics Circle Award Winner for Criticism
Review-a-Day (What is Review-a-Day?)
"The problems with this history begin with the title page — with the self-assured title itself, which seems more promotional than informative, and with the subtitle Listening to the Twentieth Century, which grows more shifty the more you think about it. It might mean listening to the characteristic sounds of the twentieth century — the roar of the jet, the song of the cell phone, the ear- and brain-splitting din of carpet bombing — rather than listening to music. Twentieth century music, as Ross has stressed with much vigor, even spleen, is mostly popular, and increasingly international. But a writer whose ambition was 'to talk about classical music as if it were popular music and popular music as if it were classical' talks mostly about Western classical music as if it were classical." Joseph Kerman, The New Republic (read the entire New Republic review)
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
The scandal over modern music has not died down. While paintings by Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock sell for a hundred million dollars or more, shocking musical works from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring onward still send ripples of unease through audiences. At the same time, the influence of modern music can be felt everywhere. Avant-garde sounds populate the soundtracks of Hollywood thrillers. Minimalist music has had a huge effect on rock, pop, and dance music from the Velvet Underground onward. Alex Ross, the brilliant music critic for The New Yorker, shines a bright light on this secret world, and shows how it has pervaded every corner of twentieth century life.
The Rest Is Noise takes the reader inside the labyrinth of modern sound. It tells of maverick personalities who have resisted the cult of the classical past, struggled against the indifference of a wide public, and defied the will of dictators. Whether they have charmed audiences with the purest beauty or battered them with the purest noise, composers have always been exuberantly of the present, defying the stereotype of classical music as a dying art.
Ross, in this sweeping and dramatic narrative, takes us from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties, from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies. We follow the rise of mass culture and mass politics, of dramatic new technologies, of hot and cold wars, of experiments, revolutions, riots, and friendships forged and broken. In the tradition of Simon Schama's The Embarrassment of Riches and Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club, the end result is not so much a history of twentieth-century music as a history of the twentieth century through its music.
Review:
"'Ross, the classical music critic for the New Yorker, leads a whirlwind tour from the Viennese premiere of Richard Strauss's Salome in 1906 to minimalist Steve Reich's downtown Manhattan apartment. The wide-ranging historical material is organized in thematic essays grounded in personalities and places, in a disarmingly comprehensive style reminiscent of historian Otto Friedrich. Thus, composers who led dramatic lives — such as Shostakovich's struggles under the Soviet regime — make for gripping reading, but Ross treats each composer with equal gravitas. The real strength of this study, however, lies in his detailed musical analysis, teasing out — in precise but readily accessible language — the notes that link Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story to Arnold Schoenberg's avant-garde compositions or hint at a connection between Sibelius and John Coltrane. Among the many notable passages, a close reading of Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes stands out for its masterful blend of artistic and biographical insight. Readers new to classical music will quickly seek out the recordings Ross recommends, especially the works by less prominent composers, and even avid fans will find themselves hearing familiar favorites with new ears.' Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)"
Book News Annotation:
Ross (music critic for The New Yorker) tells the story of 20th
century classical composition, which for him is an "untamed art, and
unassimilated underground." While composers from Richard Strauss to
John Adams lie at the heart of the narrative, Ross also places them
within a social and political world, describing the politicians,
dictators, corporate officers, art patrons, intellectuals, and
critics who have attempted to adjudicate and control musical
expression and the social upheavals that impacted the lives of
composers and the music they produced. He also goes beyond the genre
confines of classical to discuss connections to such artists as Duke
Ellington, Miles Davis, the Beatles, and the Velvet Underground.
Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Review:
"With every page you turn, the story departs further from the old fairy tale of giants bestriding the earth and looks more like the twentieth century we remember, with fallible human beings reacting to, reflecting, and affecting with symbolic sounds a flux of conditions and events created by other fallible human beings. And turn the pages you do. A remarkable achievement." Richard Taruskin, author of the Oxford History of Western Music
Review:
"A rare and successful weaving together of musical and cultural history, at once sweeping and accessible, written felicitously by a seasoned music critic at home in the history of the last century. An enticing and bold invitation to learn something of the great themes of the past century." Fritz Stern, author of Five Germanys I Have Known
Review:
"A must-read for those who have struggled with understanding modern music and a benchmark book that should eventually become a classic history of the 20th century." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"There seems always to have been a 'crisis of modern music,' but by some insane miracle one person finds the way out. The impossibility of it gives me hope. Fast-forwarding through so many music-makers' creative highs and lows in the company of Alex Ross's incredibly nourishing book will rekindle anyone's fire for music." Bjork
Synopsis:
Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, takes readers from Vienna before the First World War to New York in the 1970s. The result is not so much a history of 20th-century music as it is a history of the 20th century through its music.
About the Author
Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, is the recipient of numerous awards for his work, including two ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards for music criticism, a Holtzbrinck Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin, a Fleck Fellowship from the Banff Centre, and a Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center for significant contributions to the field of contemporary music. The Rest Is Noise is his first book.
What Our Readers Are Saying
Add a comment for a chance to win!
Average customer rating based on 3 comments:
-
Mitzi, January 18, 2008 (view all comments by Mitzi)
If you are interested in the world of classical music, including those composers not yet dead, then you'll enjoy Mr. Ross' tour de force. Classical music, by the author's definition, did not stop with the death of Beethoven. There are many contemporary/20th Century composers who are creating very listenable music. The problem, according to Ross, is that the very term Classical has frozen the concept in time. This chill has made it difficult if not impossible for contemporary composers to break through into popular consciousness. If you are a fan of mr. Ross' weekly column in the New Yorker, then this is a must read.
-
Grady Harp, December 7, 2007 (view all comments by Grady Harp)
A Richly Informative, Engrossing Examination of Twentieth Century Music
Alex Ross has the ability and the resources to write about the music of the 20th Century and to establish himself as the creator of the definitive volume with the publication of THE REST IS NOISE: LISTENING TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. His depth of knowledge is matched only by his ability to communicate with a writing style that places him in the echelon of our finest biographers. This book is indeed a comprehensive study of the music created in the 20th Century, but it is also a survey of all of the arts and social changes, effects of wars, industrialization, and quirks and idiosyncrasies that surfaced in that recently ended period of history: Ross may call this 'listening' to the 20th century, but is also visualizing and feeling the changes of that fascinating period.
Ross opens his survey with a detailed description of the premiere of Richard Strauss' opera SALOME and in doing so he references all of those in attendance (from Mahler to Schoenberg, the last of the great Romantics to the leader of the Modernist innovators) and focuses not only on the chances Strauss took using a libidinous libretto by the infamous Oscar Wilde to the astringent dissonances that surface in this tale of evil and necrophilia. The ballast of that evening is then followed throughout the book, a means of communicating music theory and execution in a manner that is wildly entertaining while simultaneously informative.
Ross studies the influence of nationalism in music (the German School, the French School, the British and the American Schools) and then interweaves the particular innovations by showing how each school and each composer was influenced by the simultaneous destruction and reconstruction of the world borders resulting form the wars of that century. He dwells on the pacifists (Benjamin Britten et al) and those trapped by authoritarian regimes (Shostakovich et al), following the great moments as well as the dissonant chances that found audience at times far from the nidus of origin. Ross crosses the 'pond' showing how American music nurtured in the European schools ultimately found grounding in a sound peculiar to this country (Ives, Copland, etc) and allows enough insight as to the influence of jazz to finally satisfy the most critical of readers.
Ross, then, accompanies us on the journey from melody to atonality and back, all the while giving us insights into the composers that help us understand the changes in music landscape they induced. The book is long and demanding, but at the same time it is one of the finest 'novels on a music theme' ever written. Highly recommended not only to musicologists, ardent music lovers, and students of the arts, but to the reading public who simply loves history enhanced by brilliant prose. Grady Harp
-
andreaburnsworth, October 23, 2007 (view all comments by andreaburnsworth)
Strauss, Stravinsky, Korngold and "What about" Schrecker, Wagner, The Beatles, Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, Ligeti, Gershwin, Chuck Berry, Brian Eno, David Bowie, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Frank Zappa and so many more composers all influencing, no, all *richocheting* influences back and forth on each other in an uniquely and delightfully, yet plenty scholarly, Alex Rossian romp through the space-time continuum known as 20th century music.
View all 3 comments
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780374249397
- Subtitle:
- Listening to the Twentieth Century
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Subject:
- Modern - 20th Century
- Subject:
- History & Criticism - General
- Subject:
- History & Criticism *
- Subject:
- Music
- Subject:
- 20th century
- Subject:
- History and criticism
- Publication Date:
- 20071016
- Binding:
- HC
- Language:
- English
- Illustrations:
- Y
- Pages:
- 640
- Dimensions:
- 9.26x6.34x1.44 in. 1.99 lbs.
